by M. M. Kaye
‘No!’ said Amanda in a sobbing whisper. ‘No Glenn. You’re mad. You don’t know what you’re saying!’
‘Oh yes I do. I thought I could get you both once before. You practically handed it to me on a plate. I meant to throw you down Anita’s stairs, and then go up and send her after you. They’d have said she must have been drunk and pushed you, and then fallen herself. Those banisters are like matchwood. But that interfering idiot Howard wrecked that too.’
Amanda said chokingly: ‘I don’t believe it! It isn’t true.’
‘Anita believes it. Don’t you Anita dear? Stand up Anita—stand up my darling. You won’t like it if I put a bullet through you while you’re on the ground. It might hit you where it would hurt. You won’t know anything about it if you stand up. The fish will leave nothing that can be identified if you should ever come up on a trawl. But I don’t think you will. I’ll weight you well. Stand up Anita____’
Anita Barton grovelled in the sand, sobbing and choking and pleading. She crawled forward on her knees, her face a mask of tears and sand, crazy with terror.
Glenn Barton looked down at her with cold disgust and fired with complete indifference.
Anita screamed at the sound of the shot and leapt to her feet, but Glenn did not fire again.
He stood staring, wide-eyed, at the gun in his hand; then he dropped it on to the sand and whipped a second one from the pocket of his coat.
A shadow moved out of the shadows of the piled rocks: and another, and another, until the moonlit curve of the narrow beach was ringed with silent men, and a familiar voice remarked pleasantly:
‘You won’t find that one any good either, I’m afraid.’
19
Glenn Barton whipped round on the speaker, gun in hand, and Amanda flung herself frantically between them.
‘Steve____!’
There was an orange flash of flame and for the third time that night the quiet cove echoed to the sound of a shot.
Steve Howard removed Amanda’s clinging fingers and said: ‘It’s only blank,’ and Glenn Barton flung the useless weapon savagely at his head.
Steve ducked, thrust Amanda to one side, and leapt at him.
Amanda heard the blow go home on Glenn Barton’s body and saw him bend double and throw his head up, gasping for air. There was the crack of a second blow to the jaw; a crisp, sharp sound that seemed almost as loud as the report of the useless revolver. Glenn Barton’s body appeared to leave the ground, and came to rest a yard or so away, spreadeagled and unconscious on the sand.
‘I have been aching to do that for days!’ observed Steve, breathing a little unevenly.
He turned to a man who was standing beside him, and Amanda saw with a numbed lack of surprise that it was the man with the odd name whom she had seen once before in the hall of the Villa Oleander on the evening that Monica Ford had died.
‘Well there he is,’ said Steve. ‘He’s all yours.’
He turned to Anita Barton: ‘If you’re feeling all right, Mrs Barton, we’ll get back to the car. Amanda, you can’t cry here! Save it for the journey back and I’ll lend you my shoulder.’
He took hold of Anita Barton’s arm with one hand and Amanda’s with the other and urged them up the narrow path towards the car. Someone was limping towards them down the path and Steve checked suddenly.
‘It’s Persis,’ said Amanda.
‘Good grief!’ said Mr Howard, exasperated. ‘What the hell is she doing mixed up in this?’
‘She came with me,’ explained Amanda.
Persis materialized out of the moonlight.
‘’Lo Steve. Sugar Ray Robinson in person, I presume? I’m sorry I missed the first two acts and the intermission, but I had a grandstand seat for the finale. It certainly packed a punch.’
She turned and accompanied them back to the car, limping a trifle, and subsided abruptly on to the running board.
Steve produced a flask from his coat pocket, removed the cap, filled it and handed it over.
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Persis, gulping the contents. ‘Boy! did I need that. Sling some into Anita; her need is greater than mine.’
Anita Barton drank with chattering teeth and looked at Steve Howard. Her face was still white and tear-streaked, but her voice was no longer hysterical.
‘I can’t thank you enough. When did you—how did you know about Glenn?’
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ said Steve gently.
‘Of course. That was why I left him. I tried to warn that fool Monica, but she wouldn’t listen. She was crazy about him.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Oh—little things. A lot of little things that all added up. Then I began to watch him, and–and in the end I found out. I was frightened then. I knew that if he once realized that I knew, he–he’d kill me. He was always a killer. Quiet and decent and–and deadly. He’d been making love to Monica, and I used that as an excuse. I had to get away from him. I had to!’
Persis said sharply: ‘I’ll believe almost anything after what I’ve seen tonight, but I will not believe that guy ever made a pass at a middle-aged dame with buck teeth and a forty-two inch waist!’
‘But he did,’ said Anita Barton drearily. ‘You see she’d been sent out to see what was going on. Mr Derington sent her. He always believed that women had an instinct over shady business. I think he must have heard a few rumours, so he sent out a competent secretary who was to find out what went on, and report.’
Anita Barton subsided wearily onto the running board beside Persis, and leaned her head back against the car door. She said: ‘Glenn made love to her. He could always make women fall for him. He has that “little-boy-lost” look about him that makes fools of the best of them—it made a fool of me too! Monica went overboard about him. He was probably the only man who had ever looked twice at her, and he reduced her to a pulp. After that he could do anything with her and make her swallow any lie. I’d stood for his affairs with half a dozen other women including Claire—Claire used to send and carry messages for him that he couldn’t risk sending himself. I don’t think she realized what he was doing. He probably told her some convincing lie; and anyway she can look after herself. But the Monica business sickened me. When I tried to warn her she was rude and hysterical, and I got Lumley to let me move in on him. He only did it to score off Glenn and Claire, and because he has an inferiority complex as a result of being a Conscientious Objector during the War, so he feels he must pose as a flouter of public opinion.’
Amanda said helplessly: ‘I don’t understand! What was Glenn doing?’
‘Gun running,’ said Steve Howard briefly.
‘What?’ Persis straightened up abruptly and nearly fell on her face on the roadside. ‘Why—say Steve, where do you come in on all this?’
‘Oh, I’d been told off to find out who was back of the racket,’ said Steve. He looked over his shoulder and said impatiently: ‘How much longer do you suppose those sleuths are going to be?’
‘Never mind them,’ said Persis firmly. ‘Spill it, honey—you have our undivided attention. I for one am not shifting from this spot until I’ve got all the dirt, and you can’t drive off with a gal on the running board!’
Steve laughed a little grimly. He accepted one of Persis’ cigarettes, lit it from her lighter, and said:
‘We knew that someone was shipping guns into Africa and we knew that they were coming from a satellite country, via Cyprus. We did not know how it was done, but we narrowed it down a bit and became interested in, among others, Glennister Barton. It seemed just possible that he was using the wine business as a cover for something more profitable. He was. And things were going tolerably smoothly for him until Amanda suddenly put a cat among his pigeons.’
‘I did?’ said Amanda incredulously. ‘How?’
‘You decided to go to Cyprus, and your Uncle Oswin sent an exceedingly official letter demanding that you be put up and taken round and offered all facilities, and all the rest of it. It was a mislea
ding document, and bearing in mind your uncle’s preference for females in the role of snoopers, Glenn Barton imagined that you were being sent here expressly to spy on him—as Monica had been. He might have tried to carry it off, if it hadn’t been for his matrimonial mess-up.’
Amanda said: ‘But why should that matter?’
‘Your uncle,’ said Steve Howard, ‘is a notorious prude in such matters. A hint from you that his nominee for the post of Barton’s secretary was rumoured in love with the Boss—not to mention the rest of the setup!—and Barton would probably have had the sack by wire. Or—more likely—your Uncle Oswin would have arrived on the next plane in order to clean the matter up.’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda slowly. ‘He might have done. He’s a bit rabid about that sort of thing.’
‘Exactly. Barton couldn’t risk it either way. He had a hell of a big deal coming off, and all he needed was just three more weeks and he’d have been in a position to clear off to some salubrious spot like South America, and keep himself in champagne and caviare until he died. It was as close as that. He daren’t say that he couldn’t have you, so he tried to stop you getting here. The stuff that Julia Blaine drank was meant for you.’
Persis said sharply: ‘Julia! You mean that was murder?’
‘But—but it was in her lemon juice,’ said Amanda helplessly.
‘It wasn’t lemon. It was sweetlime. And there was plenty of sugar in it as well. The carpet was sticky with it. You merely jumped to the conclusion that it was lemon juice and meant for Julia because you hadn’t ordered it, and, by a fluke, had happened to change cabins with Mrs Blaine much earlier in the day. Julia would never have ordered or touched such a thing. But a nice icy lime squash left in a cabin on a hot night was a pretty tempting bait. And when you told me that Mrs Blaine had gone to bed around ten o’clock, it began to look even more as though that glass had not been in the wrong cabin after all.’
‘But why, Steve?’
‘Ice. You didn’t go down until nearly eleven, but there was still ice in that glass. There were chips of it on the carpet when I got there. If that drink had been in your cabin before ten the ice in it would have melted. Yet if it had been meant as a trap for Mrs Blaine it would never have been put there almost three-quarters of an hour after she had left the deck and gone to her cabin with a certain amount of attendant publicity. You, however, were dancing.’
Amanda said on a gasp: ‘But–but Glenn!… Glenn couldn’t have done it. He wasn’t even there!’
‘No. But one of his thugs was. You don’t really suppose that anyone could run a racket of that description single-handed, do you? There were a gang of ’em up to their necks in it! This was a man called Kostos who was masquerading as a deck-hand. The husband, incidentally, of a woman who keeps an inn on the road to Limassol where you appear to have almost lost one of your nine lives.’
‘It can’t have been! Glenn told me that her husband was an old wreck of a man who____’ She stopped suddenly and said in a shaken voice: ‘I see now. He had to say something to make me turn round and look away from the table, so he said the first thing that came into his head. And then she—the woman—said that her husband had been on the ship. Why didn’t I notice that? And Glenn dropped his cigarette into my glass. To make sure that no one else would drink it I suppose.’
‘He also,’ said Steve grimly, ‘arranged for the disposal of the deck-hand. He was taking no chances. The chap was supposedly killed in a bar-room brawl: which was, oddly, enough, the reason why Miss Moon’s staff, who were related to the widow, did not return on the day that Monica Ford was murdered and you were so neatly shoved over the battlements at Hilarion.’
Amanda shivered violently. ‘But why Steve? Surely if–if I’d died here it would have been just as bad for him? Uncle Oswin would have come over then.’
‘Would he? From all I’ve heard of him he doesn’t sound like a man who would allow his niece, who was also his ward, to be buried in a place like this. It would have been the Derington Family Vault or nothing! Barton would only have had to cable your uncle that he was arranging to fly your corpse home in a coffin, pronto, and would he please meet? And it’s my bet that your grief-stricken relative would have scrubbed the rest of his business schedule and taken the next plane to England, so that he could collect the dear-departed at London Airport, and lay on a suitable funeral. And if he had come here, he would have been in no state to start bothering about his wine business. That’s for certain!
‘If he’d come, it would only have been to collect the coffin from scratch, so that he could escort it home in person. Either way, he wouldn’t have had the time or the inclination to start investigating the affairs of Mr Glennister Barton until he’d got your mortal remains parked in the family vault. And by that time, Barton would have been living it up in Buenos Aires or Montevideo, or wherever.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Amanda with a shiver. ‘You’re right about the family vault; and about Uncle Oswin too. He’d never have left me here…’
‘Exactly. I expect Barton was banking on that. But once you’d arrived in Cyprus—presumably to spy out the land—Barton could not risk letting you leave here alive. It was the time factor. He had to have those extra weeks, and the money involved was worth taking risks for. Any risks! He would have killed you and half a dozen others cheerfully for it.’
Amanda said: ‘But why on earth should I have committed suicide? What possible reason could I____’
‘Judging from statistics,’ interrupted Steve impatiently, ‘the average adolescent can decide to “End It All” for any number of footling reasons. Unrequited love coming high on the list—the “I can’t live without him” syndrome. That would always have been a safe card to play, since it would have been difficult to disprove, once you were dead. After all, it even occurred fleetingly to me—and a lot less fleetingly to the police!—that you might have bumped off Julia Blaine in the hope of snaffling her husband. It was considered a possibility. And if you’d died of the same poison in that pub; it could have been written off as remorse!’
‘Yes, you told me about the “possibility”,’ snapped Amanda, torn between indignation at remembered outrage, and annoyance at being classed as an ‘average adolescent’: ‘But what about Monica? It wasn’t possible for Glenn to have killed her. Not by any stretch of even your fertile imagination!’
‘Oh yes it was. He saw her going into Miss Moon’s that afternoon, and followed her in. She had come to see you.’
‘But why? What did she want to see me for?’
‘Because both she and Barton, as a result of your uncle’s letter, had it firmly fixed in their heads that you were really here as a sort of private agent for him. And she had found out what Barton was up to.’
‘But surely, she must have known before?’
‘She’d probably always known or suspected that there was something pretty peculiar going on, but I think she deliberately shut her eyes to it and tried to pretend that it was merely a matter of smuggling a few cigarettes. Something on those lines. But that afternoon a case, supposedly containing wine, got broken, and as Barton was out, she opened it herself and realized what he was doing. A week earlier and she might still have looked the other way, for she was about as completely under Barton’s thumb as a frustrated spinster can be. But her brother had just been murdered by Mau Mau terrorists—armed by Glenn Barton! It broke her up, and she rushed into Kyrenia to see you and spill the beans. And Barton strangled her.’
Amanda said: ‘He can’t have done, Steve! He can’t possibly have done it. The police proved that he went straight from Hilarion to Nicosia.’
‘He did. But he killed Monica Ford before he ever arrived at Hilarion.’
‘But she was warm!’
‘I know. That was what put us all out of step for a bit. He’d left her in front of the french windows, where the sun had been full on her from the time he killed her until just before it set. It had barely gone from the room when we got back; remember? Of cours
e she was warm! It’s never as easy as detective fiction would have you believe to fix the exact time of death. It depends on a good many things, and temperature has a lot to do with it. Glenn Barton had his wits about him, and made very good use of the fact that the sun would be on that bit of the room from roughly four fifteen onwards. He came on to Hilarion, mentioned having seen the woman, and provided himself with a nice alibi all round. And when he was telephoned for by the police—as he knew he would be—he arrived complete with that neat bit of evidence against his wife, and planted it as he came through the hall.’
‘I knew it was Glenn who had done that,’ said Anita Barton with a shudder. ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else. There were several of those flowers in the house. They were always coming off, and I’d left a lot of my stuff behind. He must have gone through my dressing-table drawers, and found one.’
‘I imagine so,’ said Steve. ‘He then provided an affecting scene by registering sufficient horror at the sight of it to attract everyone’s suspicious attention. And Amanda nearly spoilt the whole show by rushing into the breach like Florence Nightingale or Flora Macdonald, and claiming it as hers. However, just in case the police proved bat-witted enough to believe her, he took the precaution of ringing up Mrs Norman and spilling the beans under cover of a distracted plea that she should go and see you, Mrs Barton, and tell you to destroy the dress. He knew dam’ well that she’d see you dead first, and also that she could be trusted to spread the story around the whole of Cyprus.’
Anita Barton said: ‘He meant to get me hanged for murder!’
Steve shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The last thing he wanted was a court case of that sort. He was working up to an artistic disappearing act, so that people would jump to the conclusion that you had lost your nerve and bolted. He worked round to that angle very nicely, and I added the last touch by ordering Amanda to write at once to her uncle. That tore it. If she had done so, and her uncle had arrived by return of post, the whole thing would have blown up in his face. I thought that threat would fetch him, and it did.’
